January 19, 2009

Sunday's Menu!

Well I unfortunately am still camera-less in Colorado, so I don't have any pictures to share, but I can describe Yesterday's tasting menu to you. This week I wanted a very straight forward, but delicious menu.

Pasta - I had some Chilean sea bass scraps and an excess of pork, and really wanted to cook Paella, though I could not bring myself to make a traditional Paella if I could not do it correctly, and a lack of Paella pans was the obstacle. I decided if I made a Paella inspired pasta, perhaps that would do the trick. We started by grinding pork loin and making chorizo, cumin-jacked and heavily salted, Chili Flakes, Smoked Paprika, and Achiote paste to round it out with some spice. Next was the pasta, Thomas Keller's pasta dough recipe hit with a touch of semolina, some extra olive oil, some salt and a little bit of saffron, rolled out and cut into linguine. The sea bass, chorizo, diced red bell peppers, tomatoes, white onions were sauteed, deglazed with clam juice white wine, and lemon juice. In went the fresh noodles and a pad of butter, garnished with chive.

Fish - We got in some beautiful whole red snapper with the hopes of serving them as whole fish, but alas, they were too large to be cost effective. We took the sides of and served them en papillote. Each filet was topped with fresh thyme leaves, orange zest, salt, white pepper, shaved fennel, lemon wheels, and butter. Served besides the fish was orange cous cous, buttered baby carrots, and lime-parsley oil.

Meat - This was an extension of the dish that we served last Sunday. There was pork loin rubbed with cardamom and canola oil, salt, and fresh ground black pepper. The pork was vacuum sealed and sous-vide at one hundred and thirty five degress farenheit. To serve the pork was Seared Crispy and warmed through. It sat atop a pile of Michel Richard's 'Potato Risotto' that I had mounted with a little butter and Parmesan. The 'sauce' was a pistachio puree made from gently cooking pistachios in milk, draining, and pureeing them with as little of the milk they were cooked in as possible, a little oil was used to smooth out the emulsion, and it was seasoned with sea salt and white pepper. The dish was finished with a touch of fried arugula, Riesling demi-glace, and some smoked sea salt.

Dessert - I know a bit less about this than the other courses, because this is the only one we didn't create, as we buy our desserts from the wonderful DBar (who we share our building with). It was a layered Chocolate cake atop raspberry coulis, served with none other than a large glass of ice cold milk in a frozen glass. To quote Lisa Bailey (our pastry chef, owner of the DBar) "Keep it simple!"

Apologies again for a lack of imagery, but look for some new photos soon! (I hope)I have also become an author for the blog on the Strings Website. Look for additional posts and videos over there atStrings' Blog.